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"the gritty cop vs. the rhinestone cowboy" - Fitz (the anti-*) v. Shrub

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Pirate Smile Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Thu Oct-27-05 01:31 PM
Original message
"the gritty cop vs. the rhinestone cowboy" - Fitz (the anti-*) v. Shrub


This Time, the Prosecutor's a Corker

By Tina Brown

Thursday, October 27, 2005; Page C01

It's one of the ironies of our media culture that the mystique of Patrick J. Fitzgerald, the special prosecutor in the Valerie Plame case, grew to mythic size simply by virtue of Fitzgerald keeping his mouth shut until he has something to say.

Manhattan media circles have been so excited by Fitzgerald's silence right up to the eve of the grand jury's term tomorrow that they've forgotten his casting as a First Amendment assassin and turned him into a cross between Philip Marlowe and the Shadow: fearless, honest, independent, laconic and unstoppable. Especially laconic -- and on that point they're demonstrably right. Unlike Kenneth Starr's late, unlamented operation, neither Fitzgerald nor anyone around him leaks.
"Incorruptibility by money is the old story," the New Republic's Leon Wieseltier commented to me this week. "Now it's incorruptibility by media."

-snip-
Meanwhile, Fitzgerald's powerful silence has made him a blank canvas on which Democrats have projected their fantasies, Republicans their anxieties. We are living in an uneasy moment of moral crisis and institutional disintegration in politics as well as journalism. No administration as tightly wound and paranoiac as the Bush regime could hope to hold together after five years of supremacy and sectarian ruthlessness, governing only for its base.

Fitzgerald has been thrust into the role of the un-George W. Bush -- the gritty cop vs. the rhinestone cowboy. In this corner, the scholarship kid from Brooklyn who worked summers as a doorman and went on to be the stellar student mentoring the less gifted. In the other, the son of privilege who goofed off at school, ducked the draft and always fell back on his dad's influential pals to -- in the memorable phrase of Colin Powell's former chief of staff Lawrence Wilkerson, writing this week in the Los Angeles Times about Powell's role in the Bush White House -- clean all the dog poop off the carpet.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/10/26/AR2005102602524.html


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glitch Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Thu Oct-27-05 01:34 PM
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1. Ouch! WP calling junior "rhinestone cowboy" that has GOT to sting. nt
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swimboy Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Thu Oct-27-05 01:38 PM
Response to Reply #1
3. He gets cards and letters from people he don't even know . . .
Everything is flash. Everything is hollow. It's a house of cards and someone left the door open and a strong wind is blowing.

All fall down.
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Pirate Smile Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Thu Oct-27-05 01:34 PM
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2. more

It's hard not to see Fitzgerald as the possessor of authentic traditional American virtues. Fitzgerald deals in facts, and lets facts speak for themselves. Bush talks ceaselessly of faith. The prosecutor is all about substance, the president all about surface. In nominating his personal attorney to the most august thinking body in the land, the Supreme Court, the president was caught showing the dismissive view he's always held of intellectual depth and scholarly accomplishment.

Fitzgerald's noir mystique was only strengthened this week by news accounts relating that in contrast to the rapier focus of his mind, Fitzgerald lives in a bachelor apartment with old socks stuffed in the desk drawer and three-month-old lasagna stiffening in the oven. Remember how in the first year of the Bush II presidency there was constant promotion of this administration's crisp corporate values? New-broom indicators like the CEO starting every meeting on time and retiring to bed at 10 p.m. were supposed to signify that personal discipline was a sign of intellectual rigor. But an empty desk can sometimes mean an empty head, one that's comfortable only with spoon-fed executive summaries and filtered "coverage" instead of self-processed information.

"It takes firm leadership to preside over the bureaucracy," Wilkerson wrote in his startling blast against Bush. "But it also takes a willingness to listen to dissenting opinions. It requires leaders who can analyze, synthesize, ponder and decide."

Republicans have been searching for a handle on Fitzgerald. They are trying, seemingly unconsciously, to offload onto him their own bad faith left over from the Clinton impeachment fiasco. Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison's shameless display on Sunday's "Meet the Press" was the cake taker. Hutchison had the gall to blandly rabbit on about overzealous prosecutors and perjury just being an itsy-bitsy crime. The narrative of Clinton's impeachment is being replayed, only this time without such incidental grotesqueries as a thong-snapping intern and a prissball prosecutor leaking like a fire hose and the recourse to churchy lines like "sex isn't the issue, the issue is lying." It's one thing to say, "If he'll lie about sex, he'll lie about something important." But what if the thing being lied about is already important? For Democrats, the prospect of indictments coming down feels like poetic justice for five years of cynicism and sanctimony.

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vickie Donating Member (663 posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Thu Oct-27-05 01:42 PM
Response to Reply #2
4. Nicely done, Tina Brown. This sums up my feelings perfectly.
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FizzFuzz Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Thu Oct-27-05 02:07 PM
Response to Reply #2
6. that last paragraph is tremendous!
really the whole article is excellent. So good to see them finally called for what they really are on more than just the blogs.

That Hutchison crap, I nearly went off the road when I heard about her calling perjury some tiny little technicality!!!!!! Especially after the self-righteous bluster over Clinton. Ecchh, they just turn themselves on, don't they?-- frothing about how VIIIIRRRRTUOUS they themselves are.
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bluedawg12 Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Thu Oct-27-05 04:38 PM
Response to Reply #2
8. This rings so true- the fake hero rich boy who's had it all handed to him
he made it to the top of the heap because his evil fat boy political geek buddy thought the vacuous nitwit looked good in jeans and had a great smile.

In the meantime, Fitz is the real deal.
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drb Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Thu Oct-27-05 01:55 PM
Response to Original message
5. Hot! Hot! Hot!
Tina, will you have my baby?

(Well, we could pretend....)
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Pirate Smile Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Thu Oct-27-05 04:31 PM
Response to Original message
7. kick
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Pirate Smile Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Thu Oct-27-05 10:51 PM
Response to Reply #7
9. kick
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